Quality as an education policy goal

Assuring quality,
efficiency and effectiveness is generally seen as an education policy goal that
comes necessarily into conflict with the goals of equity or equal chances, on
the one hand, and freedom and democracy, on the other. These three sets of
policy goals form a kind of triad the poles of which can always be played out
against the two others. Experience shows that the need to improve quality has
often legitimised state intervention leading to the restriction of school and
local level freedom. Similarly, efforts to provide equal chances in the
education system has often been made to the detriment of quality, and quality
schools have often been described as selective institutions disliked by
egalitarians.

This dynamic of the
three sets of complementary education policy goals seems, however, to have been
changed in the last one or two decades. In many countries quality and
efficiency problems have been imputed to the state playing a too strong role,
and giving more freedom to schools or introducing market mechanisms have been
seen as a powerful instruments to assure better quality and efficiency. And
similarly, it has been discovered that the capacity of a system to compensate
disadvantages depends very much on the quality of teaching in terms of adequate
pedagogical methods, differentiated learning and well focussed institutional
management. While in the past quality was a synonym of academic excellence it
is now more and more connected with various educational goals, including the
efficient treatment of school failure or the successful compensation of social
disadvantages. Today – even if this is not always present in the everyday
practice - it is widely recognised that schools catering for difficult student
populations can be qualified as high quality institutions. Naturally, the
criteria of quality and effectiveness are not the same in these schools than in
those which cater for the academically talented.

All these changes
show a radical shift in the definition of
quality and also in the conception of the instruments
that can be used to reach quality education (I shall come back to these
later). This shift has also changed the dynamic of the three major policy
goals. The broadening of the definition of quality and effectiveness and the
new ideas on how to reach them have made from this education policy goal an
integrative one. Quality and effectiveness (together with efficiency) have
became in our modern education system those goals that may receive support from
almost all actors of the policy scene. Egalitarians and those committed to
fight against school failure, selection or exclusion are now more and more
often looking for quality schools that are specially equipped to cope with
these issues. An similarly, defenders of autonomy, freedom and consumer liberty
can more and more often see themselves as the most efficient supporters of
quality.

The themes of
monitoring, evaluating and assuring quality, as it has been pointed to by many,
have come into the focus of education policy in most developed countries since
the middle of the seventies. This has been a major policy shift after more than
two decades of major structural reforms, democratisation and expansion being
the key policy concepts. The profound causes of this shift have been frequently
described by many authors: long lasting economic crisis and waves of financial
austerity measures following the 1974 oil crisis bringing the accountability
and “value for money” philosophy to the fore of government policies; the
failure of social-democratic and Keynsian welfare state policies to cope with
the crisis and the emergence of new liberal-conservative solutions; the
disappointment with the results of the great structural reforms of the sixties
and seventies and the search for new, alternative ways to change the education
system; the legitimation crisis of the modern capitalist state, the
participatory movement and the growing difficulties to govern huge and complex
social systems efficiently and to sustain social support for them etc. The
changing dynamic of education policy goals is, in fact, part of this story. If
the goal of quality and effectiveness is capable to integrate various policy orientations
we can count on this goal remaining a major axis of education policy on the
long term.

With some delay
Central and Eastern Europe seems to follow the same trend. It is not surprising
that from the triad of equality/equity, quality/effectiveness and
democracy/freedom the last one was considered as the most important one in the
early period of establishing political democracy. In this period the goals of
emancipating education from under political tutelage, reaffirming national
identity and restoring the autonomy of schools, local communities and the
teaching profession have naturally prevailed over the other goals.

In this region
quality was generally not a priority even for the re-emerging conservative
thinking – to which the stressing of this goal is often associated – or at
least not in the same sense as for their Western European counterparts who
sought alliance with the market-oriented liberals. While the latest understood
quality as it is perceived by the consumer
of the education service for many Central and Eastern European conservatives
quality education appeared as the synonym of the traditional academically
oriented education.

A changing definition of quality

The current thinking
on quality puts the stress on the public service dimension of education. This
way of looking at education is different of what we have been used to for
centuries since it expects that schools not only transmit universal and
national cultural values, socially relevant knowledge and their mission is not
only to develop the individual capacities of children but they also have to
satisfy the various needs of different users, that is parents, students,
employers, local communities and others. This way of thinking considers user satisfaction as perhaps the most
important criteria for quality. According to this education as a public service
can be qualified as of good quality if its various users or consumers are
satisfied with it.

Our traditional mind
is often shocked at first if somebody talks about consumers in connection with
education. But those who do so can say: consumers – that is parents, students,
employers or local communities – do not expect other things from schools than
educational leaders. What do the parents, for instance, expect in general? They
expect that schools do the best for the intellectual, moral and psychological
development of the child, that they transmit those values and intellectual
contents that are relevant in our societies, that the child becomes motivated
to learn, that he or she become prepared for professional life. In fact what
the consumer expects is generally not very different from what we professional
teachers and educationalists do. Therefore, if we give him the possibility to
formulate and express its expectations and we demand schools to listen to them
we release a powerful instrument for the achievement of our goals.

Those who accept this
may be surprised why the consumer has received so little attention so far in
connection with education, contrary to other services. Why such a powerful
instrument to improve the quality of education has not been used in a much
wider way? The answer to this question lays partly in the well known desire of
the nation state and the national political elite to have the monopoly of
defining what quality in education is.

The greatest challenge for a state education policy that places
quality at the top of its priority list is that not everybody understands the
same thing when speaking about the quality of education, that is there are
concurring quality notions. The problem seems, however, to be less severe if we
realise that there are some common points almost everybody can accept. One of
these common points is that quality, whatever it means, must be permanently
assured, or that its presence must be rewarded while its lack must be
sanctioned. The question is not whether the efficient transmission of natural
science knowledge or the successful development of co-operative skills leads to
better quality education but whether educational activities, independently of
the educational goals that are pursued, are done effectively, with openness to
self-correction etc. or not. Or, toput
it in a very simple way from the point of view of the consumer, the question is
whether the service is provided so that the consumer is satisfied. It may
happen that the consumer can not define exactly what he or she desires but it
is always easy to decide whether he or she is satisfied.

When thinking about
quality we cannot avoid reflecting on some other notions that generally appear
in the vocabulary of quality oriented education policies. Earlier we mentioned
quality together with the notions of effectiveness
and efficiency. The literature of the
Anglo-Saxon countries makes the difference between these two notions always
very clear. It is evident that a school may be very effective – that is it
realises successfully the educational goals assigned to it – but still it is inefficient
– that is it pays a too high price in terms of resources for its success. This
distinction between effectiveness and efficiency is much less emphasised in
some other countries, sometimes the translation of these notions itself is
difficult.

Education policies
focussing on quality pay logically a strong attention also to evaluation and measurement of results. This is not surprising since evaluation and
measurement are, by no means, among the most efficient instruments to achieve
quality. Here again, however, there are some problems that are worth being
reflected to. When speaking about evaluation and measurement educators often
limit the scope of their attention to learning achievements. Learning
achievement are certainly among the most important outcomes of education that
have to be evaluated but they are not the only one. If evaluation is seen as an
important function of education systems it is necessary to construct a register
of all those factors which can and should be evaluated and also a register of
all those actors who can play a role in evaluation. The same is valid, off
course, also for quality. If quality is to be assured in an education system,
there is a need to list all those elements of the system which may have good or
bad quality, and to define the desirable action of all those actors who may
have an impact on quality (I shall come back later also to this).

Learning achievements
are, again, only one these factors, and supervisors or administrators are only
one category of potential actors. Beyond the learning achievements evaluation
should be directed to such factors as teacher work, educational leadership,
schools as institutions, teaching programs and materials, support mechanisms
and so on. But even if we limit our attention to pupil achievement, we must
have a broader view: not only factual knowledge but also general competencies
must be measured. This requires, of course, more sophisticated measuring
instruments.

A further concept
that must be taken into consideration is that of added value. There is a growing awareness of the importance of
measuring not only outcome indicators in themselves but also their relationship
to input indicators. The effectiveness of schools or pupils producing similar
measured results may be very different if these results are produced on the
basis of different inputs. The recognition of the importance of the concept of
added value may also lead to the reduction of the traditional conflict between
policies aiming at improving quality and those aiming at creating equal
chances. If added value is measured instead of outcomes in absolute terms
schools catering for disadvantaged students groups may achieve similar or
better results than those receiving academically motivated students. In fact,
schools working with socially handicapped or less motivated children often do
high quality work which cannot be measured through learning achievements. If
quality is understood in a narrow academic sense these schools may be
discouraged or disqualified in spite of the high quality of their work (which
is a logical explanation for the typical resistance of those committed to equal
chances policies against narrow minded quality policies).

All what we said
shows how difficult is to find a generally accepted meaning for educational
quality. This difficulty was convincingly demonstrated by study prepared by an
expert group for the European Commission on quality management and quality
assurance in higher education[1]. The study quotes the hero of a book written by Robert Pirsig in the
early seventies who was looking in vain for the essence of quality. When he
finally though to find it he got mad. The expert report formulates the
conclusion: there is no sense in looking for the essence of quality, nobody
never will find it. Instead of following the essentialist efforts it is better
to follow a nominalist approach and to accept the definition given by C. Ball
in 1995 in his book “Fitness for Purpose”. According to this quality is fitness
for purpose, that is its meaning always depends on the goals in given
circumstances. The question of who defines the goals of course remain a key
question.

Actors, levels and areas

The question of who
defines the goals brings us back to the concept of consumer as the key actor
who is capable to compare products or services with his or her needs and goals.
Putting the consumer in the focus does not solve our problems since in the case
of education it is not evident at all whom we should see as consumer. So far we
have given attention mainly to parents but parents are only one of the
potential consumers of education. We have to take into consideration other
groups as well, like local and national communities, local and state
authorities who are legitimately mandated to represent the interests of these
communities, civilian organisations or the business community and the different
representatives of the world of economy. They all take part in the definition
of quality therefore the definition we give to this notion depends on all of
them. Since no single definition of quality can satisfy the needs of all these
various actors there is no other choice as to accept the co-existence of
divergent quality definitions. The conclusion we can draw here – and this is
probably one of the most important statements we can make – is this: more an
education system is capable to meet the educational needs of various social
groups, mot it is capable to produce quality. A precondition of producing
quality in our modern, multifunctional education systems is encouraging
diversification that is the possibility of satisfying a great variety of
educational needs. We have, therefore, to create such organisational and
regulatory conditions that allow the highest number of needs to be satisfied.

This necessarily
directs our attention to the institutional level. If we accept the approach
presented above the institution inevitably becomes a key actor. It is only at
institutional level that the needs of particular consumer groups can be
identified, analysed and particular adaptation strategies can be elaborated.
The most important condition for producing quality education services is the
commitment of individual institutions towards quality improvement, that is the
presence in every school of a conscious effort to improve quality. This effort
should appear as continuos organisational actions aiming at evaluating quality
and improving it. The quality awareness of a school organisation is almost
necessarily leading to better quality even if external quality definitions are
not given. It is evident that the management has a key role in creating and
sustaining this organisational level quality consciousness. It is probably not
an exaggeration if we say that this task of raising and reinforcing the quality
awareness of schools is among the most important tasks of educational managers.

Stressing the importance of the institutional level does not mean
that we can neglect the role of those professional and administrative players
who operate above the level of the school. If there are no well founded
national standards to be followed by every school that particular institutions
can refer to, institutional level efforts alone will not create good quality
education in any country. Similarly, if the teaching profession as a whole does
not see quality and quality improvement as a highly ranked priority that must
strongly influence professional preparation and practice at all level, single
institutions will not be able to make a counterbalance. Forces at the
institutional (micro) level and those at national (macro) level, including the
teaching profession as a whole must mutually reinforce each other.

This leads us to a
second major conclusion that can be formulated here: a policy of educational
quality can be successful only if it creates a synergy between micro and the macro level actions. Even a very
high level school level quality awareness cannot produce good quality in an
educational system if no reference can be made to well founded national
standards, and if pursuing quality is seen as highly ranked professional
priority within the teaching profession as a whole.

Our reflection on the
meaning of quality has led us to the conclusion that not single and simple
definition can be given. In fact, a key element of any policy of educational
quality is a permanent questioning on what quality is. Any discourse that uses
the notion of quality or quality improvement in a general way is somehow
suspicious. When speaking about the quality of education we should always put
the question: it is about the quality of what concretely. This is fundamental
since the quality problems of different things necessitate very different interventions
at very different levels. There is no general quality problems and no general
answer can be given to different quality problems.

It is particularly
important therefore that – before evaluating, criticising or praising the
quality of an educational system – we do the detailed analysis of all those areas in connection with which it is
meaningful to talk about quality and – before initiating policies of quality
improvement – we think about the specificity of strategies to be used. The
meaning and the way of improvement of quality is not the same when we talk
about the learning process in the classroom and individual pupil learning, the
individual and collective work of teachers, the operation of the school
organisation, the activity of the maintainers of schools, local school networks
or national education systems, curricula, teaching programs and textbooks, and
so on. If we look only at one or two of these and forget the others it is
improbable that we can pursue efficient actions for better quality. This is
however quite typical. It is not rare, for instance, that people make
tremendous national level efforts to improve educational programs, curricula
and textbooks and forget, that all these material will not produce quality
learning and teaching if the quality of the school organisation remains bad or
– especially – if teachers are not prepared to use the high quality material.
The opposite form of mistake is also frequent. School level organisation
developers and those committed to the improvement of management often neglect
the importance of the nationally set curricular and evaluation standards.

Finally, we also have
to think about all those actors who
may have an impact on quality, that is those who can improve or damage quality.
A special attention has to be given to those who may have an active role in a
policy aiming at assuring quality. One sided thinking is not rare in this
respect either. Many of those who are concerned about quality tend to limit
their reflection to what the state could or should do and forget the other
potential actors or management levels. They do not see how tremendous role, for
instance, the school level management or the local community institutions can
play in this area. Those who believe in community actions – should they be
local or national –tend to forget the possible impact of assessments made by
individual consumers. There are also those who think local and individual
actions can solve all quality problems and do not see the huge potential of
state actions. If we want a really efficient policy of quality assurance the
better is to go through all the possible actors and think about what particular
action they may efficiently pursue in what particular area. If, for instance,
we want to improve the quality of the textbook supply probably we shall come to
the conclusion that national level actions are more efficient than school level
ones (although the latter also may have influence). On the contrary, if we want
schools to be more open to their environment we probably shall be in favour of
school level actions. And if, for example, we want active teaching methods to
replace passive ones, we have to combine national and school level actions sine
none of these would be effective without the other.

Further policy implications

A policy of quality
in the education sector has some preconditions. One of them is that there
should be a demand for improving and preserving quality in other sectors as
well. A certain social climate is needed for a policy of quality becoming
successful. If people are satisfied with education or if they are preoccupied
by other kinds of problems – for instance with problems of basic democracy,
religious freedom or equity – a policy of quality improvement does not have
much chance to be implemented. According to what has been said in the first
section of this paper it is logical to think that those committed to improve
the quality of education have to find allies. The way we define quality will
also define who our allies will be. But here I would like to stress again: the
policy of quality improvement has become something that has a great chance to
win the support of others.

It comes from what
has been said in the previous section that a policy for improving the quality
of education should be a complex one taking into consideration (1) the
complexity of the notion of quality and its possible different interpretations,
(2) all the different fields and functions of education in connection with
which it is meaningful to talk about quality and (3) the high number of actors
and players which have an impact on quality and which may play an active role
in improving it.

One of the key
conclusions we can draw from the considerations above is that a policy of
quality improvement and assurance has to start with a public debate on what
quality is. In fact, this debate is part of the policy of quality, since the
debate itself contributes to the improvement of quality. If a narrow quality
notion is imposed without public debate the risk of important groups becoming
disinterested or even destructive will grow.

Many of those who are
concerned for quality think that a policy of quality improvement is a policy of
strengthening control. Some think that if control is reinforced, quality is
immediately assured. I think, they are wrong. It is evident that control mechanisms
are essential for quality assurance but there is no equality between the two.
On the one hand control may be used for many purposes and not only for assuring
quality. On the other, there are a number of instruments besides control that
should be used. The policy of improving and assuring quality necessarily
contains elements of introducing new control mechanisms and reforming existing
ones. But this policy will be efficient only if it takes the form of a complex development program containing a
number of elements like modifying existing regulations, establishing new
incentives, developing new institutions and new competencies, increasing
resources for certain functions, letting or encouraging new actors to enter the
scene, looking for new allies, the use of communication and training to change
the behaviour of certain actors and so on.

Let me give just a
few examples on the basis of our recent reflections and experiences in Hungary.
We are spending millions on new programs and textbooks but we have very little
knowledge on how the influence the teaching learning process. Why should not we
spend some of these resources on investigating the impact of different programs
and textbooks. Some people rightly point to the shocking contrast between the
health and the education sector. In the health sector a new medicine is
introduced after years of experiments. When the future users receive the
medicine they also get information on its appropriate use which is based on the
preceding research. In education we introduce new teaching materials without
any similar testing and the teacher who starts working with the material does
not necessarily know in what conditions it works and in what conditions it does
not. Producing more relevant knowledge may be a key factor of quality.

Another example comes
from teacher initial and in-service training. A policy of quality improvement
and quality assurance will probably have very weak impact if it does not take
teacher training as a strategic area. Teachers, in general, are very little taught
on how to evaluate their own work, how to use feedback coming from different
directions to improve their work or how to take an active part in those school
level activities that serve the improvement and maintenance of quality. Most
teachers understand only when they leave training and enter the real school
that teaching is not an individual but a collective work and that the quality
of teaching can be assured only through collective action.

Thinking about
instruments and mechanisms that can assure quality we often forget how powerful
simple communication is. Putting teachers and schools into communicative
relationships may improve their involvement, their information on the value of
their own work, their knowledge on what other people expect from them, and so
on. Communication puts into motion this way a number of factors that have a
direct impact on quality. Co-operation has a similar impact. Co-operating with
others gives us feedback, challenges us, makes us to improve what we bring into
co-operation. If two schools have to realise a common project it is almost
certain that they will work better than if they had to work alone. If teachers
have to solve a problem in a team they certainly will come to a higher quality
solution than if all of them work separately. If there are working education
media, if there are permanent forums for discussing education problems, if new
ideas are rapidly communicated within the teaching profession quality will
improve even if this is not an explicit goal. Probably improving and enriching
communication and co-operation in the education system itself is one of the
most efficient ways to improve quality.

The example of
communication and co-operation shows well that we have to seek linkages and
synergies between policies and we should find the potential positive or
negative impact of actions in other policy areas for our own policy goals. The
teacher profession was also mentioned in the previous paragraph. In fact the
process of professionalisation of teaching is again a powerful supporter of
quality. If teaching becomes more professionalised, that is a professional
identity becomes stronger, informal professional control mechanisms start
working, standards are more carefully defined and sanctioned and a vivid
professional public emerge quality will certainly improve. Here again, we can
conceive a strong policy of quality without pronouncing the word quality. This
is an example which also shows the risks. Strong professionalism, especially if
the profession becomes too closed and tradition oriented may block development
processes. In the case of the policy of quality improvement this may make it
more difficult to adapt quality definitions to recent social challenges.

The risks of a two
narrow professional definition of quality may be reduced if the reinforcement
of professionalisation is accompanied by strategies leading to open schools to
their environment and letting new actors to enter the scene. This is also in
harmony with what has been said earlier on the role of consumers. If the
consumer has to receive a key role in judging and improving quality the
institutional framework for this role has to be created. When we do this we
always have to keep in mind the potential conflict between professionals and
consumers. In fact, the goal is the create an alliance between those
professionals who think their mission is to provide high quality service to
their users in a professional way and those consumers who know that the quality
they wish can be produced only by professionals. This coalition represents
probably the most powerful support for a policy of quality improvement and
assurance. We have to know that professionals who deduce their mission from
broader national, religious or other general societal goals will be more
reluctant to enter such user oriented coalitions.

One of the most
important elements of policies of quality assurance is institutional evaluation
and self-evaluation. In this area there appears a particularly strong need for
development. On the one hand new instruments and techniques have to be developed,
on the other hand administrative and institutional mechanisms have to be
changed so that they encourage the use of these new instruments. There is also
a danger in over-emphasising evaluation, should it be external or internal.
Evaluation is normally periodical while quality has to be assured on a
permanent basis. Therefore it is not enough to introduce and reinforce
evaluation, but there is a need for daily mechanisms that assure quality on a
continuos basis. Quality experts make a deliberate distinction between quality
control and quality assurance. Evaluation is always used for the first but not
necessarily for the second. Organisations need mechanisms that are build into
their daily operation which assure quality almost automatically, even if nobody
thinks of it.

If institutional
evaluation and internal quality assurance mechanisms are is to be generalised,
there is a need for well trained specialists who have the appropriate expertise
and practice in this area. A training background for these specialist has to be
created within higher education or elsewhere. Part of the special knowledge in
this area can be found outside the country. International co-operation should
be used to import this knowledge.

This leads us again
to the question of creating synergies not only between different policy areas
but also between different administrative lines. It is quite typical that while
those in a ministry who are responsible for school education try to mobilise
resources for a policy of quality improvement, those who are responsible for
international affairs in the same ministry do not know anything about it.
International communication if, from many respect, a powerful instrument in
quality improvement. Not only as a way to import and export relevant knowledge
but also as an instrument to establish and strengthen standards, to make
judgements more objective or simply to motivate actors to improve their results
through the challenges of international communication.

[1]Quality management and quality assurance in
European Higher education – methods and mechanisms, Comission of the
European Communities, Brussels, 1993